A small ovate Palaeolithic handaxe from the Dartford Heath Deposits
The Palaeolithic finds from the Dartford Heath deposits include a series of small ovate frequently twisted handaxes that includes some of the smallest handaxes found in Britain. Recently a small pointed ovate handaxe from these deposits was lent by the finder to facilitate further research. It was found in 1991 at a depth of 0.6m at the bottom of the hole that was being dug for a fence post in North Road, Dartford, Kent just above the start of the slope from Dartford Heath to the modern Thames floodplain (TQ 5201 7408; OD 31m). The handaxe measures 107.8 mm in length, 85.7 mm in maximum breadth, is 24.7 mm thick and weighs 230.5 gm. It is unrolled and is very finely worked with a circumferential cutting edge with working of the butt and tip ends and a slightly twisted profile and has a blue-white patina on one face and a blue-grey patina and 10% thin worn cortex on the other, both faces being overlain with an orange staining.
The British Geological Survey maps the geological deposits at the find site for this handaxe, as part of the Boyn Hill /Orsett Heath formation. The Dartford Heath deposits consist of a thick sequence of interglacial predominantly fluviatile loam, sand and gravel units and have been exposed at Bowman’s Lodge Pit which is about 50 metres south of the find site for this handaxe, at Wansunt Pit which adjoins Bowman’s Lodge to the southwest and at Pearson’s Pit which is further to the south-east (fig 2).
[fg]jpg|Fig 1: The small pointed ovate handaxe found in North Road, Dartford, Kent in 1991. Both faces and a profile view.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 2: North West Dartford Heath showing North Road, the Bowman’s Lodge find site (stippled) and Wantsunt Pit. Based on Peter Tester’s sketch map in Archaeologia Cantiana 63.|Image[/fg]
The sequence of the Dartford Heath deposits at Wansunt Pit (see figs 3, 4 & 5) is shown in Table 1.
The dating of the Dartford Heath deposits in which this handaxe was found and their correlation with other deposits in the Lower and Middle Thames region has been the focus of an interesting debate since the late nineteenth century. Some researchers propose two separate formations abutting each other within the Dartford Heath deposits, the higher of them, the Wansunt Loam correlating with the post-Anglian Boyn Hill/ Orsett Heath formation and the lower, the Dartford Heath Gravels, correlating with the upstream late-Anglian Black Park Terrace on account of their high altitude (Hinton and Kennard 1905,84; Zeuner 1959,154; Gibbard 1994,19; White et al. 1995,117).
Others propose that the thick deposits at Dartford Heath represent a single formation, fully equivalent to the Boyn Hill/ Orsett Heath Formation that is prevalent as an east-west series of terrace patches in this part of northern Kent. Bridgland suggests that the Dartford Heath deposits represent an unusually high feather edge deposit of this formation that was laid down by the ancient Thames in the postAnglian interglacial period between c. 450,000 and 350,000 BP.
[fg]jpg|Fig 3: The Wansunt Loams in Wansunt Pit in 1913 being removed from above the Dartford Heath Gravels (used with permission).|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 4: Wansunt Loam Section 1, as re-opened in 2015 (photo by Peter Allen). For comparison, the section drawing from the 1995 QRA guide showing the approximate positions of the 2015 steps (used with permission).|Image[/fg]
The implication is that the Dartford Heath deposits are a direct upstream continuation of the sediments at Barnfield Pit Swanscombe and other sites such as Dierden’s Pit and Rickson’s Pit in the Swanscombe area as shown in fig. 6. Dartford Heath is about 5 miles upstream from Swanscombe. (Chandler & Leach 1912,104; Smith & Dewey 1914, 199; Bridgland 1994,191; Bridgland et al. 2014, 151).
In 2001, a section at Swan Valley Community School, Swanscombe, Kent was identified as equivalent to the Swanscombe Upper Loam. It extended upwards to 39 m OD, a height which would link it to the latter part of OIS 11. The Wansunt Loam at Dartford Heath has a similar vertical range and has comparable sediments. Correlation of the Wansunt Loam with the latter part of OIS 11 would place the main body of the Dartford Heath Gravel either in the Anglian (OIS 12) or earlier in OIS 11. It could thus be seen both as the earliest fluvial deposit to have been recognised in the Lower Thames and potentially equivalent to the Black Park Gravel of the Middle Thames, and yet part of the Boyn Hill/Orsett Heath Formation However, the teeth of an interglacial elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) were reported from the base of the Dartford Heath Gravel in 1913.
This would suggest that the majority of the sequence dates from the interglacial OIS 11, although the localised presence of late Anglian deposits cannot be ruled out (Leach 1913, WenbanSmith and Bridgland 2001, 252).
In either proposal, it is evident that the artefacts from the Dartford Heath Deposits represent some of the earliest known palaeolithic material from Kent dating to an early part of the period between 450,000 and 350,000 BP. It is possible that some palaeolithic artefacts found in the higher reaches of the south bank tributaries of the Thames in this area such as the Ravensbourne, the Cray, the Darent and the Medway which are all the remnants of longer pre-Anglian rivers could be older but no artefact bearing deposits have been securely dated in these upper valleys which are now frequently dry or almost dry but which previously contained much larger Pleistocene water courses (Beresford 2018, 38).
[fg]jpg|Fig 5: Some closer views of Wansunt Section 1 as reopened in 2015. Step One (top); Step two (middle); Base (bottom). Photos by Peter Allen.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 6: Idealised terrace staircase sequences of the Lower Thames showing summarised Palaeolithic archaeology. The Wansunt Loam and the Dartford Heath Gravel are mapped top left (© David Bridgland 2018).|Image[/fg]
The location and depth at which the North Road handaxe was found would suggest an original relationship with the Wansunt Loam. R. H. Chandler and A. L. Leach (1911, 107) were the first to describe Palaeolithic artefacts from Wansunt Pit which were found mainly in the Wansunt Loam with a few from the upper part of the Dartford Gravel. The known assemblage from Wansunt comprises 43 handaxes, largely in mint condition, together with 53 flakes and a core. Most of the hand axes are small pointed ovate or cordate forms with a mean length of only 90 mm. All are intensively worked, 75% having a circumferential cutting edge with equal working of the butt and tip ends. Twisted profiles are common, with 8 fully twisted pieces. This is one of the assemblages that led White (1998) to conclude that British assemblages with high proportions of twisted (ovate) hand axes all belong to the terminal Hoxnian (MIS 11) or to the transition into the subsequent (MIS 10) cold stage (cf. Bridgland & White, 2014). Chandler and Leach noted these handaxes in their 1911 report with a photo. This is shown in fig 7 with some of the illustrated examples which are now in the British Museum.
Nearby, at Bowmans Lodge Pit, Peter Tester found Palaeolithic Artefacts derived from the surface of the gravel, beneath an overlying brick earth that he interpreted as a continuation of the Wansunt Loam (Tester 1951, 1975). The bifacial component of the assemblage included 18 complete and finished pointed ovate or cordate handaxes with a mean length of 86 mm. All except one are twisted in profile and with a circumferential cutting edge with equal working of the butt and tip ends similar to the North Road example. An example, now in the British Museum, is shown in fig 8.
The large collection of Palaeolithic material from Peter Tester’s collection that was recently transferred to the Shorne Wood Archaeology Group includes about 100 pieces from Bowman’s Lodge (Beresford, 2017). There are 15 pieces, including implements, which were found in uncertain contexts while the rest are flakes from the base of the loam that are similar to much of the assemblage now in the British Museum. They include seven further pointed ovate or cordate handaxes, four with a twisted profile with a mean length of 84 mm, and one of these, marked loam, is shown in fig 9.
[fg]jpg|Fig 7: Chandler and Leach’s 1913 report photo of some of their collection of small pointed ovate handaxes from Wansunt Pit with three of the illustrated artefacts now in the British Museum. (used with permission)|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 8: A similar small pointed ovate handaxe found in Bowman’s Lodge Pit. Both faces and a profile view.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Fig 9: A small pointed ovate handaxe with twisted profile and tranchet removal at the tip found in the loam at Bowman’s Lodge Pit. Both faces and a profile view.|Image[/fg]
Similar small pointed ovate handaxes also formed part of the palaeolithic assemblage found at Pearson’s Pit in the south-east of Dartford Heath (Newton 1930, 42). There are 27 in the British Museum, 20 with a twisted or slightly twisted profile and with a mean length of 92mm. One is shown in fig. 10.
The small ovate pointed handaxe with a circumferential cutting edge and a twisted profile is a distinctive element of all the Dartford Heath palaeolithic assemblages. It has been proposed that the knapping technique that produces these characteristics is based on working each quadrant of the axe in turn through a series of inversions and rotations (White 1998, 99). The North Road hand axe is a particularly fine addition to this range of examples. The 1995 fieldwork at Wansunt Pit demonstrated the survival of undisturbed Pleistocene deposits around the edge of the eastern extension of Wansunt Pit that extended under housing to the north (White et al. 1995, 124; WenbanSmith et al. 2003, 6). Only further field work would establish whether this handaxe is also indicative of the potential in this northern area.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the owner of the handaxe for lending it for this study – it has now been returned. I would also like to thank David Bridgland and Peter Allen for their help with this paper. David Bridgland provided fig. 3 and prepared a new version of fig. 6 for this paper and Peter Allen provided the photos for figs 4 and 5. Figs 1 and 2 courtesy of Medway Archives. Figs 3 and 7 are by permission of the Geologist’s Association. Fig. 4 (diagram) is by permission of the Quaternary Research Association. Figs 7, 8 & 10 are by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
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